Chickens Come Home To Roost

That Indonesia is ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world is common knowledge. Well, it is if you are a regular reader here. But never let it be said that Jakartass is blinkered to corruption in other regimes.

Money does not corrupt people. What corrupts people is lack of affection. Money is simply the bandage which wounded people put over their wounds
Margaret Halsey

General Pinochet (90 tomorrow) of Chile is now uinder house arrest having been charged with tax evasion and corruption. He is unloved.

The investigation by the Chilean authorities includes alleged secret payments of more than £1m from BAE to General Pinochet, but these are not the subject of yesterday's charges against the dictator.

Yesterday, a senior executive of British Aerospace (BAE) was arrested in connection with a £60m "slush fund" to secure huge arms contracts in Saudi Arabia.

If we did not take great pains, and were not at great expense to corrupt our nature, our nature would never corrupt us.
Lord Clarendon

In the USA, the Republican party was yesterday facing a fast-growing corruption scandal with potentially serious implications for next year's elections after a well-connected Washington lobbyist pleaded guilty to bribing a congressman and other public officials.

More reading

A Brief History of Sleaze (UK)

The Wheel of Shame (Canada)

Corruption Roll Call (USA)

It's said that 'power corrupts', but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.
David Brin

Gen (ret) Suharto is also unloved and, by the definition above, of unsound mind. So are the following folk named last year by Transparency International as the Top Ten in the All-time Corruption League.

Suharto: $15-35bn (Indonesia, 1967-98)
Ferdinand Marcos: $5-10bn (Philippines, 1972-86)
Mobutu Sese Seko: $5bn (Zaire, 1965-97)
Sani Abacha: $2-5bn (Nigeria, 1993-98)
Slobodan Milosevic: $1bn (Yugoslavia, 1989-2000)
J-C Duvalier: $300-800m (Haiti, 1971-86)
Alberto Fujimori : $600m (Peru, 1990-2000)
Awaiting extradition from Chile.
Pavlo Lazarenko: $114-200m (Ukraine, 1996-7)
Arnoldo Aleman: $100m (Nicaragua, 1997-2002)
Joseph Estrada: $78-80m (Philippines, 1998-2001)
Still in jail.

 

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